


Delete Saved Game?

by adhddyke



Series: Not Quite A Video Game- Zombie Apocalypse Survivor AU [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Bill be my fave but I hadn't written anything Bill-centric yet, F/M, Hallucinated ghost Georgie, Hallucinations, Hero Complex, Including coping with what happened with Bob Gray, Loneliness, M/M, Not any major violence or anything, Stan and Mike and Bill really do not want to Leave, Suicidal Thoughts, They're all about twenty by the way, Zombie Apocalypse, struggling to cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:46:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adhddyke/pseuds/adhddyke
Summary: The survivors are simultaneously desperate and terrified to leave the forest where they killed Bob Gray and move out further for resources. Bill's not bothered about resources, though, or falling in love like the others seem to be. He just doesn't want to leave Georgie behind completely.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak, Bill Denbrough & Georgie Denbrough, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris
Series: Not Quite A Video Game- Zombie Apocalypse Survivor AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573150
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Delete Saved Game?

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this doesn't disappoint! Sorry I haven't written anything in a while. I replied to a comment on Not Quite A Video Game in October promising more from this AU- and I failed a bit in getting that out soon. Since I've just started uni I've been a bit busy. 
> 
> At any rate, hope you enjoy!

Just beyond the trees, Bill knows there's the moaning and feet-dragging sounds of the zombies. He knows that in some places, those zombie noises will be met with the screams of those who were survivors. Before, he used to make Georgie wear those ear plugs you use when taking off in an airplane, because the sounds were frightening and it was bad enough that Georgie had to see the apocalypse, had to live it. But now Georgie is dead and Bill has six new people he can protect properly this time. They don't even have to use ear plugs because the forest is silent and silence is good. Bill doesn't ever want to leave. They could forage and farm and survive like that. Leaving the forest, for Bill Denbrough, is leaving his little brother. 

Of course, the forest has its own sounds, and those are good like silence is. They're sounds of life: wind in leaves, the occasional bird, the humming of birds, the low buzz of conversation amidst the survivors he needs to protect, the bird sounds from Stan and Mike's whistles (constantly in their hands, held tightly). It is quiet but it's perfect at blocking out the memory of Bob Gray's laugh. It isn't quite perfect at blocking out Georgie's angry whispers, but Bill knows he deserves those, at the least. 

He takes a watch every night, tries to take them all night. Protect Georgie, he had told himself every day before, just to keep himself going. Protect them, he told himself now. Their sleeping forms were plagued by nightmares, but they still looked more peaceful like this. Liking the sound of the leaves beneath his feet, Bill walks towards a tree not too far away. Hesitantly, he begins to climb, ignoring the tired swimming of his eyes and pounding of his head and weakness of his limbs. He lets the tree scratch at his palms, revels in the stinging sensation of the thin lines of blood it's leaving. From the top, amongst the remaining bits of dead foliage, Bill can just make out a town despite the darkness. But there's far more trees, streets and streets of them. That's better. He wonders what might happen if he drops from this height, and considers letting go. 

Georgie stops him.

"You don't get to let go," the boy hisses, his skin greyish, eyes empty, almost blind. Each time Bill sees what he knows must be a ghost, Georgie looks more like a zombie. "You let me die and then you ate me. You were supposed to protect me. You don't get to let go."

"I know," Bill mumbles, his stuttering even heavier than usual. "I'm sorry." 

"You're a killer," Georgie says. "You killed me and you killed the clown. What happened to everyone deserving a chance at life? Or did that only count when Audra got bitten? You're a liar and a killer."

"He- he killed you. He didn't- I was-" 

"He didn't kill me. You did."

"I know. I killed you. I'm sorry." 

"Are you alright?" Someone says, and Georgie disappears. Bill blinks once, twice, then turns his head. Eddie is climbing up the last branches, struggling a little bit. Succumbing to the brotherly urge he wishes he could forget, Bill grabs the short boy's arm and helps him up to the top of the tree. 

"You should go back to sleep," Bill tells him. 

"Fuck off," Eddie replies. "You should _go_ to sleep. I'll take next watch."

"I don't need to-" _deserve to_ \- "sleep. I'm fine. Why are you awake, Eddie?"

"Bet you can't guess," Eddie says sarcastically, rolling his eyes at Bill. The gesture is friendly, and Bill relaxes. But relaxing makes him feel bad- Eddie is having bad dreams, and Bill should be doing something about that, not relaxing. 

"I'm sorry," Bill tells him. "For your nightmares. And for leaving. I'm supposed to be keeping watch. I should- I should be protecting you guys."

"Please, if I got a paper cut Richie would have a freak out and wake from a coma," Eddie jokes. "You can take a break, sometimes. We need you to." There's an uncomfortable pause. "Who were you talking to? Before I came, I mean?" Bill flinches. "And don't tell me 'your mom', or I'll shove you from here."

"Just myself," Bill lies. Obviously, Eddie knows that isn't true, because he's glaring at Bill. 

"Get some fucking rest, Bill," Eddie instructs. 

"I'm resting," he argues. 

"Sleep." 

When Bill and Eddie climb down from the tree, Eddie takes over the watch, putting his apocalypse-husband's head in his lap and stroking his hair as he sleeps. This would be adorable, Bill thinks, if love wasn't pointless in this time and if Eddie wasn't still angrily staring him down. Relenting, sort of, Bill lies down, but he doesn't sleep, he watches the treetops above him, where Georgie, in that yellow raincoat that can't be missed, is looking down on him. 

***

Mike rambles about farming again. He does that a lot. 

"We could stay, is all," Mike says, rolling the bird-whistle between his fingers. Stan takes Mike's free hand and squeezes. "Just live off of the land. Never leave." 

"We don't have farming equipment," Bev argues. She's the only one who hates it in the forest. It makes her claustrophobic, and that makes her angry. She's suffocated by everyone else's emotions here. Bill feels bad, but he can't leave Georgie. "We'd have to leave for that. There's a town nearby. It's not so far. We could get there in a day."

"We don't have any idea how many zombies there are on that path and in that town," Bill points out. "It's safer here."

"We'd survive," Bev insists, clenching her jaw and her fists. "That's what we do." 

"It's smarter to go," Ben says, staring at Bev assuringly although his words address everyone but her. "We'll die out here." 

"We'll die out there," Stan contributes miserably. Mike blows his whistle, Stan blows his back. 

"We have to take the risk," Ben urges.

"Staying here we might as well be dead," Bev adds. 

"Yeah, see, thing is, we're not actually dead," Richie points out. "Just in case you couldn't tell. Though corpses get boners, right, and that's like...99% of me…"

"Richie, shut the fuck up or I’ll be making sure you won’t be able to come back to make corpse-boners,” Eddie snaps. “This is kind of important. We’re low on medical supplies.”

“There’s herbs,” Mike objects. “People use plants for healing all the time.”

“Do you realise how ridiculous you sound?” Bev scoffs. 

“Leave him alone,” Stan frowns. “It’s hard. You get that. You find it hard here. You don’t have to be a- a bitch.”

“Awkward,” Richie points finger-guns at the others. “Eds and I are gonna… go there.”

“Where’s there?” Eddie whispers. Richie shrugs. “Let’s.”

Thus, although it can’t be later than midday, the group sets up camp, not that there’s much to organise. Bill watches as the others sat in their pairs, and wishes they could see his own one.

“Don’t kill them, too,” Georgie pleads. For once, Bill doesn’t respond. He just folds his knees up to his chin and waits for it to go dark. Before he can make sure he takes first watch, Bev is on it, and he’s supposed to go to sleep. But he still watches the others. Eddie and Richie always seem to move further from the others, whispering amongst themselves and embracing until they eventually fall asleep, and doing that again when one of them inevitably wakes. Their space is neat now- Eddie always makes sure of it. But they’re both restless sleepers, kicking and pulling, so they’ll be in the mud by the morning, their thin blanket probably halfway up a tree. Oddly enough, Mike and Stan don’t lie next to each other but tops-and-tails, their feet brushing. Both are constantly telling the others how important sleep is, and they set an example of that. They’ll arise first, and walk around a little bit. Their bird whistles are closer to them than their weapons. 

Soon enough, everybody but Bill and Bev is asleep, and Bill counts the stars. When he’s counted the ones he can see despite the fog coming from the approaching winter, Bill sits up. 

“I’ll take the next watch,” Bill says. 

“Go to sleep, Bill,” Bev dismisses.

“I slept,” he promises/lies. 

“No, you didn’t,” Bev shoots him down. “What’s bothering you, huh? We need as many sane minds as possible here. I’m starting to think we’ve got none.”

“Nothing’s bothering me,” Bill insists. “And I’m sane. And I slept. So let me take the watch.”

“Ben’s already said he’ll take it when I get tired,” Bev shrugs, eyeing him. “But thanks. Go to sleep.”

“Fine,” Bill huffs. But he’s still watching when Ben opens his eyes, not even needing Bev to shake him awake. He’s still watching when Ben wraps a ring made from woven grass around Bev’s finger, and when Bev throws her hands around him. 

“It’s a promise,” Ben’s whispering, and Bill feels lonely. “When we get to town, we’ll get rings. We’ll get apocalypse-married. If you want to, I mean. I- I get if you don’t, but I- I love you, Beverly. I want to be yours.”

“I want to be yours, too,” Bev replies, and there’s a genuine smile on her face, with a happy flush. It makes her look her age, rather than ten years older with the angry creases on her forehead. “You’re the sweetest, Ben. I love you.” 

“Are you going to sleep?” Ben asks. 

“Don’t be silly,” Bev’s grin is stupidly wide, and Ben’s appears for a split second. “How am I supposed to sleep after that, huh?”

Bill wonders why everyone is allowed not to sleep except him.

***

“It’ll be even colder soon,” Bev is telling Stan when Bill wakes up the next morning (though he doesn’t remember falling asleep). “We need warmer clothes, thicker blankets. Tents, even.” Stan is huddled up in front of the fire, teeth chattering, his blanket and Mike’s arm lying over his shoulders. 

“Yeah, about that,” Richie says. “I’ve been convinced.”

“How?” Stan narrows his eyes. 

“You worry about yourself,” Eddie interrupts. Richie winks, which makes Stan flare his nostrils. 

“What if you and maybe a couple others go to do that but then come back?” Mike suggests diplomatically and desperately. “We get what we need, but we stay where we’re safe.”

“We’ll run out of resources,” Ben points out, and Bill notices how he’s holding Bev’s hand and running his fingers over where the ring was (it has been removed, and Bill realises this apocalypse-wedding is a secret). “We’ll keep running out of resources, and we’ll keep having to go further out. We just have to keep moving.”

“But- if you got the stuff to farm-” Mike protests, a growing anxiousness about him which is distressing because he’s usually so calm. “Bob Gray had a garden.”  
“Yeah, a plant one and a people one,” Richie says. “We don’t need to be like him.”

“We can’t make attachments to places,” Eddie says, flitting his eyes to Bill in a knowing way that makes him uncomfortable. He shifts. 

“But we can to people?” Bill addresses Eddie, but looks pointedly towards Richie, which makes Eddie look frustrated, cocking an eyebrow and grinding his teeth.

“We can be attached to people so long as we do what it takes to survive,” Bev says. “Places… we have less control over places.”

“What it takes to survive is avoiding those things and avoiding people like-” Stan cuts himself off. “I don’t want to go.”

“No one’s going to make you,” Mike assures him. “We want to stay.”

“It’s you two and Bill versus the rest of us,” Bev shrugs. “That’s the vote.”

“Then we’ll split up,” Stan replies bitterly.

“What?” Richie jerks back, looking terrified and vulnerable and it’s the most serious Bill’s seen him since Bob Gray. 

“We can’t split up,” Bill mumbles, though he isn’t sure he’s heard over the chaos over the people around him. “Have to protect you- we have to- Georgie-”

“I don’t want to split up,” Mike complains. “I want to stay together and I want to stay here.”

“It can’t happen like that,” Ben tells him. 

“It can! It can!” Stan freaks out, and Richie is also freaking out, even with Eddie’s hand on his arm. 

“Why the fuck would you say that?” Eddie looks panicked, on the verge of joining the freaking out, and Mike is getting there, too. Even Ben looks unnerved. 

“Everybody calm down!” Bill yells into the chaos. It’s the loudest and most commanding he’s spoken since it was first articulated that they should leave the forest (Georgie). “We are staying here and we are not separating! I’m supposed- I’m supposed to be protecting you, and I say this is where we’re safe.”

“Your brother wasn’t your fault, Bill,” Eddie says, and Bill wishes Eddie wasn’t the one he was closest friends with. “You protected him. You’ve protected us. You’ve been doing great. But keeping us here, that’s dangerous. It’s not leaving him. He’s gone. We k- we got our revenge.”

“Shut up,” Bill manages, standing up, fists curled. “You guys leave, then. Whatever.” And he walks away. 

***

Although Bill thought he was walking further into the forest, he finds himself at the edge of the forest around the same time that the sun is beginning to fade into nothingness for another long night. Panicked, he briefly considers turning back and finding the others. 

“You’ll never see them again,” Georgie says. “I think they’ve gone back to Bob Gray to look for you. I bet he’s gotten out of the cage. I bet he’s already killed them just like he killed me, and it’s your fault.”

“No they haven’t,” Bill insists. “That’d be stupid.”

“And leaving them wasn’t stupid? You’ve scared them. You’re not protecting them. You never protected me,” Georgie replies. “And now you’re leaving me.”  


“I’m not,” Bill swears, looking desperately at his little brother. “I won’t leave. I swear.” 

“I can’t leave,” Georgie reminds him. “You don’t get to.” 

“I know,” Bill cries. “I’m sorry. I am. Please stop this.” 

When Georgie falls silent, Bill stares out into the world before him, an existence outside of the forest. For a moment, there’s a tug of longing in his gut, but it’s quickly swallowed up by that evil, massive spider of guilt that’s constantly making webs about his heart and guts and brain. Then he sees the playground, the brightly painted metal of swings and a tiny climbing frame and a roundabout. It’s playful and innocent and Bill is vomiting into the bushes. He doesn’t wipe his mouth. 

“That’s not so far,” Georgie says. “That’s not leaving me. We can both stay here. You can protect me again.” 

“Yeah,” Bill agrees, nodding. “That’s what I’m supposed to do.” 

It can’t be more than five minutes away. When he nears it, he can see those cursed shapes, those smudges on a non-existent god’s canvas, an evil design. Bill remembers Catholic school, remembers picking Georgie up from there years later and feeling wrong all over again, because he was all these bad things. But Georgie was good. He wonders why Bob Gray kept him alive. He wonders how he’s any better than Bob Gray, and when he thinks about the clown’s blood on his skin he shudders and vomits again.

With that sound, he catches the attention of those things. He doesn’t want to call them zombies, because this is worse, so much worse. It can’t be stuck under some mythologising label that makes him think of video games and B-list movies. Because the heartbreaking reality is before him: children. Sort of. He thinks of Georgie, and when he looks back at the boy staring from the trees, he’s just like these other kids. They’re pounds of rotten flesh with innocent dulled eyes and small limbs, One of them has a torn throat. Bill thinks about the child it once was, how it must have screamed. The thought makes him flinch, breaking the staring contest he didn’t realise he was having. The roundabout creaks to a stop and there is a terrifyingly empty, slow moment. 

Then they break into a run towards him. Bill thinks about the other survivors in the forest, how he can’t lead these things in there. He moves further from Georgie, who seems to be yelling something, and he sits on one of the swings. It seems so fast and so slow. He’s welcoming them, eyes squeezed shut, afraid of dying but ready to be dead, and more than anything not wanting to look at those things anymore. The scent of decay grows stronger and he can feel the cold coming closer. He waits for the bites and tears, hating the hesitation, but they never come. He hears yells and grunts. Richie is swinging Batilda right in front of him, taking down one of the kids. 

“You’re welcome, cap’n,” Richie salutes, then goes to help Eddie, who looks on the verge of crying at the zombified children and can’t quite bring himself to hurt them. 

For a moment, Bill can convince himself that it’s fake- these twenty-year-olds hardened by years of surviving the end of the world swinging weapons at half-rotten kids. The zombie kids seem to move in unison, as a pack, but so do the survivors. It’s like a ballet, or something. But Bill pushes the thoughts away, because it’s not fair. It’s real and that sucks but he can’t live a lie any more. He takes his own axe off of his back and swings it at one of the things. Again, he wants to vomit. But they came for him, despite the shit he had just pulled in leaving them in the forest. 

It’s over as fast as it begins, and Bill keeps his chin up, refusing to look down at the ground, to look down at the remains of stolen lives. He’s crying again, he realises after a moment. It shocks him. Then his friends are hugging him. 

"It's okay if you don't feel like you can protect us. You don't have to. We'll protect you,” Eddie mutters, loud enough for them all to hear. That sounds nice, Bill realises; being taken care of instead of taking care of for once. “But if you do something like that again…” 

“You came after me,” Bill whispers, surprised. Georgie was lying- no, he tells himself firmly, Georgie was a lie. Georgie was dead, and Bill was a killer, still, but more of a vigilante one. 

“Duh,” Bev replies, rolling her eyes affectionately.

“I, for one, voted for leaving you behind,” Stan jokes monotonously, and they laugh tearfully. 

“We can leave,” Bill tells them as they pull apart. “We should leave.” 

“You know, it’s not so dangerous. We keep each other safe, and we have things to live for,” Ben says, smiling at Bev. “That’ll keep us going.” 

“Surviving is so much more worth it like this,” Richie nods. “Besides, maybe there’ll be some hot MILFs I can leave Eddie for in town.”

“Eat shit,” Eddie says, shoving him playfully.

“Yeah, and when it’s all over, we can still have a farm,” Mike adds, still on about that idyllic lifestyle.

“You mean if,” Stan corrects. 

“I mean what I said,” Mike refuses, and Stan looks at him with a lot of love in his eyes. It makes Bill happy. He likes seeing the people he cares about happy.

“Yeah,” he agrees. 

They spend one last night in the forest since it’s already nearly dark. Bill promises them all he’ll sleep, so he decides he should. But first he climbs. 

“Hiya, Georgie,” Bill mumbles. 

“You’re leaving,” Georgie says. “You said you wouldn’t.”

“I wish you were real,” Bill tells him. “More than anything. But not really. I don’t want a Georgie who hates me. I wish Georgie was still alive. But I have to face it: he’s gone, and you’re not real. Georgie would want me to move on and be happy. He would.”

He doesn’t want to see if it disappears. He climbs down the tree and for the first time in a while gets enough fucking sleep, lulled by the familiar sounds of his friends’ breaths and whispers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you liked it! There's a couple more fics I've got planned out that I hope I can pump out soon enough in this series.


End file.
